National Greatness

Editorial boards at three major U.S. newspapers are criticizing President Barack Obama’s foreign policy speech at West Point as incomplete and failing to recognize America’s international standing.

The New York Times editorial board, often supportive of the White House, wrote that his “address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left.”

Obama “provided little new insight into how he plans to lead in the next two years,” the Times wrote, “and many still doubt that he fully appreciates the leverage the United States has even in a changing world.”

[…]

The Washington Post editorial said the president’s “binding of U.S. power places Mr. Obama at odds with every U.S. president since World War II.”

“President Obama has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries,” the board said, attacking the president for resorting to rhetoric instead of adjusting policy.

The Post also said that Obama provided “scant comfort” to those concerned about his policies on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

You read that correctly. The New York Times and the Washington Post, two of the top news publications in the country – and two of Obama’s biggest supporters and defenders – are criticizing his lack of emphasis on American exceptionalism, a major problem conservatives pointed out about him well before he was elected. Yes, I do believe hell may have actually frozen over.

While the president of the United States pitched his crumbling healthcare program like a late-night infomercial barker, the Army’s chief of staff made a shocking admission about national defense.

Gen. Ray Odierno told a Washington conference Monday that the U.S. Army had not conducted any training in the last six months of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

And, he said, there currently are only two Army brigades rated combat-ready. That’s a total of between 7,000 to 10,000 troops and less than one-third what the combat veteran regards as necessary for proper national security.

“Right now,” Odierno said, “we have in the Army two brigades that are trained. That’s it. Two.”

Odierno also revealed that troops shipping out to Afghanistan now are prepared only to train and assist Afghan troops, not to conduct combat operations themselves. But, of course, there’s no guarantee the Americans won’t find themselves in combat while accompanying Afghan soldiers.

All this to obey Obama administration orders to drastically cut the Army and military spending and meet cuts under sequestration. Since the Obama Pentagon began the troop draw-down two years ago under the president’s orders, more than 33,000 active duty soldiers have been cut.

Current plans call for additional reductions of 42,000 soldiers in the next 23 months to a total of 490,000, down from 570,000. Those cuts have been accelerated by two years under Pentagon orders and will involve involuntary separations of thousands.

Read the rest for Andrew’s take on what looks like a purge of the generals. Funny how it’s only the military that’s being held accountable…

There was a time, from FDR through LBJ, when American liberals saw American power as a good thing for the world. No more. Since the takeover of the Democratic Party by the New Left, beginning in the 1960s, progressives and their allies to their Left have seen American power as a source of the world’s problems, not a cure or a preventative. For the new liberal internationalists, decline is a choice.

We’re now seeing the results of that choice, and the world is being made more dangerous because of it.

It’s a fact often forgotten by many, after 237 years, but the United States is a truly revolutionary nation — one of the few in the world, in fact, because we declared that all Mankind is equal, that government derives it’s power from the people, alone, and that the people have the right to change that government when they see fit. The band of men who made that declaration in Philadelphia had no idea how their gamble would turn out –some thought hanging at the end of a rope was as likely as winning– but I think it’s safe to say it’s succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and in ways they couldn’t imagine. The revolutionary ideal contained in the Declaration of Independence first compelled the nation to purge itself of the evils of slavery, refounding itself in the process, and then to bring the light of liberty to other peoples around the world, sometimes with great success, sometimes not, but always with a firm belief in the power of liberty and human liberation.

So now we’re going through one of our periodic crises of national confidence. Times are tough: the economy stinks, the world seems to grow more dangerous, and many of those in our government seem to want to turn us from free citizens into dependent children. At times like these –and on this day, especially– I think it’s a good idea to re-read our national “vision statement,” both to remind ourselves of who we are and why we exist, and to stiffen our spines to tell the new King Georges “NO!!”

Declaration of Independence

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

There has been a lot of talk recently as to the poll numbers that are suddenly showing Obama with a distinct edge in battleground states. Specifically, the chatter is that the heavy oversampling of Democrats is what is giving our celebrity President the appearance of being in the clear lead in the final five weeks leading up to the November elections.

From what I’ve read of the various polling data, that appears to be the case in some instances. In others, not so much. While I’m sure there is no coordinated conspiracy on the part of the MSM and the polling outfits they use, there’s no question in my mind that they are in full “re-elect Obama” mode and are using the questionable numbers to hammer Mitt Romney, blaming his 47% comments – among others – for his supposed “dramatic drop” in the polls. At the same time, they search for “clues” that the RomRy campaign are “re-launching”, which to the mainstream media equates to acknowledgement that the GOP ticket’s message isn’t resonating with voters and as a result they are trying to switch gears.

While RomRy certainly have their work cut out for them on messaging and convincing voters they are a better choice to put America on the road to recovery than O’Biden – bad polling or not – I’d like to address the frustration and discouragement of those who are reading these polling numbers and who are resigning themselves to the media narrative that Romney and Ryan can’t win.

STOP.

As I noted yesterday on Twitter, I heard from several friends and family members via email, text, or phone expressing to me deep concern about Romney’s “falling numbers.” This is the intended effect, of course, for the MSM – who are notorious for trying to manufacture horse races the closer it gets to election time. I told everyone I talked to to not get discouraged, to not let what they were hearing cause them to start believing this election was hopeless. Because it’s not. Not even close.

We don’t need the input of veteran pollsters to aid us in coming to that conclusion, do we?

Four years ago, Barack Obama rode into the office in a blaze of glory, basking in the support of a compliant lapdog media, reliable Democrat supporters, actual Republicans in Name Only, and independents who desperately wanted to believe he was the agent of hopey change he made himself out to be. The youth vote, the black vote, and Independents were particularly energized for candidate Obama, and they carried him to victory in several key states – including North Carolina, where he saw his smallest margin of victory for flipped states.

But reality has set in for some of these folks, and there are numerous reports – which I have documented here – that suggest the youth vote edge is gone, enthusiasm is lacking, and that there are enough black voters dissatisfied with Obama’s stances on various social issues like abortion and gay marriage to perhaps make his life very difficult in key states he and Romney know they must win. Some independents are experiencing wake up calls and understand now that the guy Obama painted himself out to be on the surface during the 2008 campaign is not the one who sits in the Oval Office.

In short, there are cracks at the seams of many of his core groups, and these cracks are just wide enough for the Romney/Ryan campaign to swoop in and try to convince even a small but significant percentage of these voters to come over to the GOP side. In many states, it won’t take much for RomRy to win – and I say that as someone who does NOT believe the polling data that relies heavily on the belief that Obama’s supporters will come out in “record numbers” for this election. I’m just not seeing it.

Yes, Romney/Ryan have an uphill climb ahead of them but we knew going in that whoever the eventual nominee was going to be was going to face seemingly insurmountable odds in defeating the empty chair in the White House. We also knew in advance that the official campaigns for both the GOP nominee and the GOP itself were not always going to be on point, and frequently make agonizing, frustrating mistakes. We also knew that the poll numbers would seesaw back and forth, and that the closer it came to people going to the actual polls to vote that the media would kick into an unprecedented overdrive to push their guy over the top.

This is what they do.

What can we do, in turn? Put polling numbers in the back of your mind. Don’t completely ignore them but don’t let them be your guide post as to how much effort you put into helping the GOP win the White House, Congressional races, etc. Whether it appears we’re ahead by 10, or down by 20 in any given state: DO.NOT.GIVE.UP. Keep pushing forward. In fact, the words “I quit” should not be in the DNA of any conservative, any Republican, any Blue Dog Democrat or independent who gives a damn about the dangerous direction this country is taking and who wants it to change course. Simply put, our focus needs to be on continuing to promote our conservative ideals, praising and defending RomRy where necessary, pushing back and hard against Democrat/media lies about either of them, and absolutely destroying false narratives painted by the Obama campaign and their allies in the press.

We have much more of a chance of winning enough states to carry us over the top if we utilize this strategy than we do if we mope around at this stage in the game thinking that what the polls say now means we’re doomed in November.

The choice is yours.

Phineas butts in: 100% agreement with my blog-buddy on this. Let me also point you to a great article at Ricochet by Rick Wilson: “Behind the Magic Trick.” Here’s an excerpt:

Once you know the secret behind a magic trick, it loses its appeal.

No matter how carefully crafted, no matter how spectacular the effect, no matter how much skill goes into its design, once you see the wires, or know where the secret compartment is, the trick stops being magic and becomes nothing more than engineering.

The trick the Obama campaign has executed beautifully this month is to demoralize and dismay the GOP base. A combination of a very, very, very heavy TV buy in swing states (pay attention, because this is a rabbit they can’t pull out every week), a fierce assault on Romney at every turn (abetted by a cooperative press that loves the taste of blood) and a series of public polls that have played into a self-reinforcing narrative that Obama is inevitable.

The trick is a good one, and to judge from the wailing and lamentations on our side, it’s been working.

I went by the local Chick-fil-A in Concord, NC on my lunch hour and the line was wrapped around the drive thru with cars lined up to get in at both entrances. People were waiting outside to get in. It was standing room only inside the restaurant. One customer who was sitting at a table eating with her young child told me there had actually been MORE customers waiting to get in earlier. Nice J I posted a few pictures at my Twitter account. Twitter, btw, is filled with pictures and stories right now of people’s experiences at their local Chick-fil-A today. Unfortunately I couldn’t eat at the one I was at because I figured the wait would be more than an hour and I had to get back to work, but my goal is to stop by another one on the way home to get a cookies and cream milkshake.

Have you been to a Chick-fil-A today? Please write about your experience in the comments section. Thanks, America, for supporting capitalism, religious freedom, and good food today!

Standing before hundreds of roaring partisans in this sweltering Pittsburgh suburb Tuesday, Mitt Romney delivered a 30-minute speech that sounded, at times, like a greatest hits compilation of his favorite Obama-knocking stump speech lines. The president was, Romney said, “out of ideas,” and “looking for someone to blame,” and a “crony capitalist.”

One thing he was not: “A nice guy.”

In speeches from Des Moines to Dallas, Romney has always been careful to hedge his tough digs at Obama with a civil nod toward the president’s moral character: “He’s a nice guy,” the Republican has often said. “He just has no idea how the private economy works.” But Tuesday’s speech included no such hedge — and one campaign adviser said there’s a reason for that.

“[Romney] has said Obama’s a nice fellow, he’s just in over his head,” the adviser said. “But I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he’s really disappointed. He believes it’s time to vet the president. He really hasn’t been vetted; McCain didn’t do it.”

Indeed, facing what the candidate and his aides believe to be a series of surprisingly ruthless, unfounded, and unfair attacks from the Obama campaign on Romney’s finances and business record, the Republican’s campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisal, said two Romney advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the next chapter of Boston’s pushback — which began last week when they began labeling Obama a “liar” — very little will be off-limits, from the president’s youthful drug habit, to his ties to disgraced Chicago politicians.

“I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use, had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate,” the adviser said. “The bottom line is there’ll be counterattacks.”

The Obama campaign thugocracy has been trying to make hay with scurrilous class-warfare attacks on Romney’s record at Bain, his wealth, and even his integrity, flat-out saying he’s either a liar or a felon. They’ve desperately released another squirrel to distract people with by calling for Romney to release far more of his tax returns than required by law, implying there must be something shady in them, otherwise, why would Romney be so “secretive?” (Sadly, some conservatives are helping. (1)) Playing nice and trying to be a gentleman in response just won’t work. (See: McCain campaign, 2008)

The proper reply is to strike back, not with whiny anger, but to forcefully speak the truth about not only your own record, not only the other guy’s record, but the truth about his beliefs and character — why that makes him unfit and you fit for high office. Romney’s surrogates started this a bit on Sunday and Monday, but, yesterday, the candidate himself laid into Obama in a speech (no teleprompter) that had conservatives cheering as he attacked Obama for saying about successful business owners “you didn’t build that:”

The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn’t build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America and it’s wrong. [Applause]

And by the way, the President’s logic doesn’t just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself up a little further, that goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who have, may have dropped out that decides to get back in school and go for it. People who reach to try and lift themself up. The President would say, well you didn’t do that. You couldn’t have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn’t have gone to school without teachers. So you didn’t, you are not responsible for that success. President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that. [Applause]

I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a President of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?

Emphasis added. That is the necessary ingredient when fighting back against Chicago-style gutter politics. The whole speech is at The Right Scoop. It’s well-worth the 30 minutes of your time it takes to watch; for once Romney is speaking with passion and conviction, seemingly off the cuff. Want to know how good it was? Even Michelle Malkin was near-ecstatic:

I believed in what he was selling: A vision for restoring American greatness and defending success.

If he gives this speech with the same zeal and optimism from now until November — offering a clear, unapologetic contrast to Barack Obama’s bitter politics of resentment, class warfare, and entitlement, Mitt Romney will win.

And there’s the key: this can’t just be a one-time or one-week strategy. Every speech he makes from now on, whether from a small-town bandstand before a dozen people or the podium of the Republican convention in front of the nation, has to strike these same themes. He can’t be afraid to call Obama out for what he is, nor to show proudly who he himself is. It’s what America wants to hear and wants to see in him — and not the defeatist, dependent, decline-is-our-choice crap Obama is pushing.

Do that, and I guarantee a Republican landslide in November.

Footnote:
(1) The whole tax return kerfuffle is just a lame distraction. Even if Romney turned over every single tax return he ever filed, Obama and the Democrats would demand more: Bain corporate minutes, Romney emails, his credit card records — anything they can use to fish for the least little thing they can spin as possibly suspicious, and just to plant the idea in the public’s mind that Romney is hiding something by simply making the demands. Instead, Romney should say he’ll release the returns — when Obama turns over his college transcripts, state senate papers, and the Fast and Furious documents. And then see how fast the Democrats drop this line of attack.

In his latest Firewall, Bill Whittle looks at two recent incidents — a MSNBC host having trouble referring to Americans killed in battle as heroes, and the resupply of the International Space Station by a private American company — to illustrate two possible paths for America: “Up or Down.”

Bill ends by saying “decline is a choice,” perhaps echoing the title of Charles Krauthammer’s brilliant analysis of modern liberal foreign policy.

But I prefer a more positive framing: that national greatness —American greatness— is our choice. It’s the choice between the diffident, enervating, and self-absorbed navel-gazing of a Chris Hayes on the one hand, and the belief of Americans-by-choice that here humanity can still achieve great things — liberate a nation, defend civilization, or build rockets to carry us into space. We have all the resources and people we need; we have the spirit.